


the platonic equivalent of hate sex

by mayoho



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Canon-typical creepiness from Count Olaf, Canon-typical disregard of physics, Childhood rivals to adult enemies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-22 16:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22619332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayoho/pseuds/mayoho
Summary: Count Olaf has successfully kidnapped and corrupted the Volunteer Feline Detectives when he encounters a childhood rival in the vastness of the hinterlands.
Relationships: Count Olaf & Lemony Snicket
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	the platonic equivalent of hate sex

Olaf has collected his lions––a pleased smile on his face as he contemplates how easily nobility is corrupted––when he spots a figure approaching over the horizon. A moment later, Madame Lulu says, “What is that?”

“That, Madame Lulu, is a person who is about to become a snack for these lions,” Olaf cracks his whip and points. The lions dart across the flat landscape of the Hinterlands as Olaf and Madame Lulu follow at a more leisurely pace. When the figure is near enough for Olaf to see that the figure is wearing a hat and suit and is almost definitely male, the figure notices the lions and stops, facing the lions, hands on his hips, taking up as much space as possible. The lions pause, rumbling warily.

Olaf growls and shakes his head.

“What, please, happens, please?” 

“A lion taming trick. Simple and effective, for the moment. The Volunteer Feline Detectives were, at least, no ordinary lions. But fear and hunger makes fools of us all.” Madame Lulu gives him a look. It is a look that makes Olaf suspicious; it is a look that has made him suspicious time and time again, but it doesn’t matter. Madame Lulu gives Olaf what he wants and he has the resources to bring her to an unpleasant end if she betrays him. He quickens his pace. 

As he gets closer, the frame and posture of the figure––now encircled by an anxious ring of shuffling lions––resolve into something familiar. Olaf’s pulse quickens with rage, but he schools his features and cracks his whip again. The lions part allowing Olaf and Madame Lulu to step into the circle. 

“Olaf,” the man says, his voice rough.

“Snicket,” Olaf growls. Snicket shrugs a shoulder, the corner of his mouth quirking up before it’s hidden behind a handkerchief that muffles a series of raspy coughs. The lions circle restlessly. Madame Lulu shifts next to him. “You sound worse than that useless banker.”

“Mr. Poe,” the underlying message of ‘it’s rude not to bother to learn people’s names’ is clear in the condescension Lemony manages to pack into the two short words, even between hacking coughs. It is nice, Olaf supposes, to know that his hatred of Lemony Snicket is still pure and uncorrupted––childish and entirely separate from the mile long list of legitimate grievances between them. It is nice, Olaf supposes, that some things do not change. 

“You are surrounded by lions, Snicket. My lions, under my complete control. I demand your surrender.” Olaf snaps his whip again and the lions edge closer. Snicket never had his girlfriend’s (fiance’s? ex-fiance’s? what do you call an ex-fiance who married another man and now they are both dead?) way with animals. There is no way he will leave the ring of lions alive without Olaf’s help. Olaf hopes Snicket agrees; it would be a pity for him to die without Olaf getting the chance to taunt him––Olaf spares a quick glance at Madame Lulu––in private. 

Snicket visibly bites back a snarky comment as he eyes the lions. They continue to creep forward––closer to Snicket but studiously avoiding Olaf and his whip. Snicket sighs and coughs, “I surrender.”

“Didn’t quite catch that.”

“I surrender,” Snicket repeats in a voice that feels dangerously soft and precise. Olaf has to remind himself that he holds all of the cards as he binds Snicket’s hands together with the shawl he commandeers from Madame Lulu. Snicket’s face remains bland and impassive but Olaf can see the tension in his shoulders, the barely perceptible anxious shift of weight from the ball of one foot to the other. Olaf has not forgotten Snicket’s tells. He yanks on the free end of the shawl and smiles when Snicket stumbles. 

The trip back to the automobile parked next to the small shack where Olaf had uncovered the lion cage and the trail leading to the lions it was designed to enclose is largely uneventful. The only event, if you could even call it that, is the small incident where Snicket’s sudden movement to muffle his coughing with his bound hands nearly causes both of them to fall over. That proves it––politeness and personal hygiene are for schmucks. 

He shoves Snicket through the entryway of the shack and glares at Madame Lulu in warning before slamming the door shut. It rattles the whole shack, dust falling from the exposed beams and gaping holes of the roof. Olaf ties the end of the shawl to one of the beams and smiles in the face of Snicket’s well concealed anxiety at being trapped with his hands above his head––exposed.

Olaf knows him. Knows his secrets (or at least some of them) without either of them saying a word. Knows that the rumors of the Baudelaire file are false (or false enough, are no longer true).

“Oh Lemony, I’m so sorry,” Olaf says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Lemony kicks him hard in the shin. 

“Ouch!” Olaf exclaims and stomps on Lemony’s toes. He makes a sharp pained noise. Interesting. Olaf knows, from a shared childhood of reckless behavior, exactly how high Lemony’s pain tolerance is. Olaf presses down on Lemony’s toes until he moans and tries to jerk away.

Olaf chuckles. “Wandering around the hinterlands with broken toes and a nasty case of smoke inhalation; you’re a disaster Snicket. It’s no wonder Beatrice decided against marrying you.”

Lemony kicks again, managing to connect with the exact same place on Olaf’s shin. He yelps in a highly undignified manner. He’s going to have a welt.

“Beatrice, Beatrice, Beatrice. It’s starting to seem like the Baudelaire fire really was a wash—no fortune, no sugar bowl, and I didn’t even get the satisfaction of burning Beatrice to a crisp.”

Anger and grief have made Lemony sloppy, so Olaf is able to intercept the next kick at his shin and shove Lemony’s foot out to the side.

Olaf smiles a vicious smile that shows all of his teeth as Lemony struggles to regain his balance. With his hands secured over his head and his broken toes still trapped under Olaf’s foot, it takes some doing. Lemony’s face is ashen and pinched and there’s a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead by the time he manages it.

“On a charming little cattle farm, near a pretty deadly lake—“

“That’s not the right tune,” Lemony says through gritted teeth.

“That’s how Beatrice sang it,” Olaf replies, drawing the dead woman’s name out in a sing-songish lilt.

“Don’t you dare.” Lemony’s voice has gone shrill and nasal.

“If your brother was half this much fun to antagonize I might have let him live.”

“You’re a horrible person.” Lemony spits out as he yanks his toes out from under Olaf’s foot. He has tears in his eyes now—Olaf suspects they are more from anger than pain.

All of this proves to be too much and Lemony starts to cough again in a way that shakes his frame. Olaf’s first instinct is to continue taunting, but he comes up with a much more interesting idea and pulls Lemony into a hug. It’s nothing like holding Esme, as that is always an opening move towards something more. This is also, Olaf supposes, a move in a game, but it is a very different sort of game than the ones he plays with Esme. He feels Lemony go rigged and then boneless in the span of one raspy breath, dropping his head to Olaf’s shoulder. Very interesting.

“Who is Madame Lulu really? I saw the way she looked at you,” Olaf asks, more out of a need to fill the silence than actual curiosity. 

“Her name is Olivia,” Lemony sounds like he needs a glass of water, but Olaf doesn’t have a glass of water and wouldn’t share if he did. “She was a volunteer.”

“I’m surprised you’re telling me this, you’re usually all obnoxious and trying to protect everyone else at great personal expense.”

“I’m very tired and exceedingly annoyed that she has been sharing my research with my enemies.” 

Olaf feels Lemony shift like he knows he ought to pick his head up and pull away but can’t quite bring himself to do it—like despite how repulsive he finds Olaf and the awkward angle of his bound wrists, this is the most comfortable he’s been in ages. Poor thing, Olaf’s inner monologue supplies sarcastically. He pets Lemony’s hair and Lemony sighs.

“They’re dead and you don’t care,” Snicket’s voice is muffled by Olaf’s shoulder but he sounds too distressed to cry.

Olaf does care. He cares that their deaths had not been nearly as satisfying as he thought they would be; he cares that he doesn’t feel any better. He pretends to ignore Snicket. 

“I was planning to keep the tiny brat alive, she’s the most compact and portable, but maybe Violet would be a better choice. She’s very pretty, and I could use her to inherit both the Snicket and the Baudelaire fortunes.” Olaf is surprised that this is what makes Snicket pull away from him. He’s even more surprised to find that Snicket is laughing, and further surprised to find that Snicket’s laughter is genuinely amused—not at all the type of sound one makes in the face of an impending nervous breakdown.

Olaf frowns—defensive and angry—reminded anew of how much he hates Snicket and has since they met so long ago that they were both still bravely ignoring the pain in their ankles.

“Stop laughing,” he hisses. This does not have the desired effect; Snicket bites his lip and ducks his head, but his shoulders are shaking with poorly concealed mirth. “Stop it! It’s not an unreasonable plan. She looks so much like you, she would have a legitimate claim.”

Snicket pulls himself together with a visible amount of effort, before he says with a deliberate calm that makes Olaf want to punch him in the stomach, “I’m sure Violet would have a strong claim, a stronger claim than I would—supposing I survive this encounter—as she doesn’t have the complication of being legally dead.”

Olaf crosses his arms. He sees a large flaw in his plan and he is suddenly terrified that Snicket will mention it. Olaf rehearses the words in his head: you have no idea what I am capable of, Snicket. Over and over again, testing each word.

Snicket sighs; Olaf is sick of Snicket’s sighs. “It’s extraordinarily presumptive of you to assume there still is a Snicket fortune for anyone to inherit.” There is a look on his face. It is a look that is dangerously close to pity, like Snicket does know the other flaw. Olaf cannot mention it. If he mentions it, he loses––certain as death. 

“So that’s where your precious organization has left you? Impoverished?” 

“Is this an attempt to flip me?” Lemony asks listlessly. He sounds almost bored.

“I would never,” Olaf forces his voice high in faux shock to hide that he is sincerely offended. When Lemony remains quiet, Olaf grinds his teeth and continues in an angry hiss, “I know you better than that. Your superiors have hung you out to dry more times than I can bother to count. You taught us how flawed it all was, but here you are, still a committed volunteer. I know, I know your nonsense. Our organization’s failures are not an excuse to give in to the bleakness and suffering of the world, but I cribbed all of my most successful recruiting points from your childhood play at being a revolutionary. Wouldn’t want all of that hard work to go to waste.”

Lemony’s reaction is deeply unsatisfying. He huffs in resignation, like Olaf has said nothing surprising or clever, simply mentioned a carefully reviewed and annotated item in the dog eared book full of potential reasons for self hatred that Lemony totes around in just in case some self flagellation is called for. Tormenting Lemony Snicket was just one more arena in which Olaf will always come up short against his childhood rival. Olaf wants to tear both of their hair out.

Olaf growls low in his chest and Lemony has the gall to laugh.

Olaf checks the urge to smack Lemony across the face. Then he weighs the act carefully and does it anyway, finding the resulting crack to be deeply satisfying. He crowds in close enough to see the involuntary tears welling in Snicket’s eyes, but the man meets Olaf’s gaze unflinchingly. It suddenly all feels very pointless. 

He spins and dramatically stalks out of the shack. He will destroy the worthless carnival, he will steal the Baudelaire fortune, he will show them all. He will destroy Lemony Snicket. Maybe he will burn the shack down with him inside it. 

He kicks idly at the dirt until Madame Lulu’s face crosses his line of sight. Her eyes are wide and staring, lips parted with uncertainty. Olaf tracks her gaze to the roof of the shack.

Snicket is balanced carefully at the roof’s peak. Damn it, he must have been loosening his restraints throughout their entire conversation and squeezed out through one of the many missing patches of shingles. Olaf stares, speechless, his entire body one line of tension ready to snap. Snicket has the gall to wave before taking a running jump off the roof, catching an updraft with a paraglider he must have concealed in his knapsack.

(Olaf did his best to ignore the voice in his head telling him how unforgivably stupid it was to leave Snicket alone with his knapsack still shoved in the corner.)

It didn’t matter. Olaf would destroy everything Snicket held dear. He would feel better then. It would make up for everything he had lost. He was certain.

**Author's Note:**

> I will probably regret not spending more time editing, but I've had this half written for such a long time now... I just needed to get this done. 
> 
> This idea initially sprouted from my misremembering some details of the Slippery Slope--namely that I forgot that the message in the verbal fridge dialogue was to, not from J.S., but either way, if we go with my theory that Lemony is J.S. (taking over a thread of a fragmentary plot after his brother's death, which I have decided ought to be VFD tradition), he would have to be there to receive the message, placing him in the immediate area at the same time the Baudelaire's are in the Hinterlands. The paraglider technically comes from that theory--that Lemony would need to be able to move silently and quickly up and down mount fraught to be in all of the places i needed him to be, and is not something I invented to get him out of the shack.
> 
> Someday, I will put together a personal headcanon timeline of Lemony's movements throughout the series, and it will be ridiculous and based on so much conjecture.


End file.
